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education and schooling folly international affairs

Doctor-to-Be of Theology

“The year 2023 is the centenary of the passing of the Freedom of Religion Act in Finland,” writes “conferer” Martti Nissinen, promoting a future ceremony of the University of Helsinki’s Faculty of Theology — in which one degree will go to . . . Greta Thunberg.

Much has been made, online, of theologians, of all people, awarding an honorary degree to a young environmental activist demonstrating no academic much less godly accomplishments. The obvious suggestion: “what she’s selling is a religion”! 

But what stands out to me? Mr. Nissinen’s declaration of this year’s ceremonial theme: “Freedom.”

Ms. Thunberg has been pestering and entreating leaders of the world to “do something” to “save the planet” from “climate change.”

What she demands is not freedom, but more

  • taxes
  • mandates
  • prohibitions. 

Whatever the actual threat may be, there is no hint of freedom in her agenda. And if you want more of that message, consult the latest alarm from the IPCC.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has issued a bizarre restatement of past pronouncements, warning “that we are almost half way through the ‘last chance decade’ to pull the brakes on climate change.”

“The world is only a few tenths of a degree away from the globally accepted goal of limiting warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels,” explains The Guardian. “On current trends, we will shoot past the target within a decade.” 

Dooming the planet

Pushing this fake “global accepted goal” has a historical context. Many similar past warnings that haven’t come true. But, more pressingly, the worldwide panic over a pandemic that even to politicians increasingly appears to be a complete failure of the experts.

Why trust the Expert Climatologists when the Expert Epidemiologists have so disastrously failed us?

Just don’t ask Dr. Greta.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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education and schooling First Amendment rights media and media people

License for Leftists

Libertarians should avoid taking sides in left-right antagonisms when promoting a principled third position would make more sense.

Regrettably, in “Christopher Rufo Wants To Shut Down ‘Activist’ Academic Departments. Here’s Why He’s Wrong,” libertarian magazine Reason fails to offer that alternative.

“In an essay published this week in City Journal,” author Emma Camp begins, “conservative activist Christopher Rufo argued that universities — or rather, the state legislatures governing these universities — should shut down ‘activist’ academic departments. But rather than protecting higher education, forcibly shutting down left-wing academic departments would be nothing more than routine censorship.”

Tellingly, she never defines “routine” censorship.

Let me help: routine censorship is the governmental policy of preventing or punishing private speech on private property. 

State colleges and universities are public institutions, politically established and subsidized by taxpayers. With few exceptions, “private colleges” are also routinely tax-funded at the demand end, and are further supported with research contracts.

Getting rid of Marxist professors preaching political revolution is no more anti-free speech than preventing the CDC and Anthony Fauci from conducting gain-of-function virus research within some college laboratory.

Ms. Camp quotes the Supreme Court about the importance of “safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned.” Freedom sounds great, but as usual, the Supremes forget that taxpayers have an interest, and that constraints on public schools was once routine.

So how not to “cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom”? 

Offer a third position: de-subsidize and dis-establish government “education” by empowering higher education’s customers. Let Marxist professors find payers in the private sector.

Instead, Emma Camp effectively tells conservatives they have no choice but to fund every leftist program that politics and the bureaucracy allow. She could have recognized that “Academic freedom” in the context of tax-subsidized schooling is merely ideological license.

Which is itself a sad alternative to real liberty.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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education and schooling ideological culture

Urinals De- and Re-commissioned

Remember when opponents of the Equal Rights Amendment said that we would wind up with unisex bathrooms should the constitutional amendment be ratified? And ERA advocates scoffed?

Well, here we are: no ERA, but unisex bathrooms . . . in public schools.

Or, more precisely, two flavors of unisex bathrooms: one room for girls along with those boys who identify as girls, and another for boys and those girls who identify as boys. 

In early February, New Hampshire’s Milford School District school board voted to cover over boys’ room urinals with garbage bags while members investigated the cost of turning all the restrooms into all-stall accommodations.

Why? A few parents of trans students had complained that urinals made their trans boys uncomfortable — their girls “transitioning” to become boys didn’t . . . well, I’ll let you imagine some of this.

Of course, urinals in boys’ rooms allow for faster turnover of users. Getting rid of them makes boys spend more time in a place they, as often as not, would like to minimize.

But it affects actual girls negatively, too.

“As a female,” one girl told a local TV station, “I don’t think it’s safe to have males in our bathroom.”

The board had also ruled that the number of students in each restroom should be limited to the number of stalls — not an efficient way to serve students’ needs, completely ignoring time spent at the sink in front of a mirror. More bizarrely yet, the board had specified that clothing changes for physical ed. be confined to locker room toilet stalls.

Last Friday, students held a walkout. And the school board backpedaled, unbagging the urinals.

Good. But I don’t think anyone can mistake all this “business” for common sense.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Accountability crime and punishment education and schooling

Problem Student, Problem Admin

“School downplayed warnings about 6-year-old before teacher’s shooting, staffers say,” The Washington Post headlined its Saturday report.

Weeks ago, elementary school teacher Abigail Zwerner was shot by a first grader in their Newport News, Virginia, classroom. Authorities are not sure of the precise motive but have called the attack “intentional.”

Zwerner remains hospitalized in stable condition, while her child assailant is in emergency custody undergoing “court-ordered mental health treatment.”*

School officials received a tip that the boy had brought a gun to school but did not find the weapon in their search.

More disturbing, The Post interviewed “educators claiming that Zwerner raised alarms . . . and sought assistance” but “that school administrators waved away grave concerns about the 6-year-old’s conduct.” The lad reportedly “threw furniture and other items in class,” once “barricaded the doors to a classroom, preventing a teacher and students from leaving,” and “was known campuswide for disruptive and violent behavior.”

One educator revealed that “the boy wrote a note telling a teacher he hated her and wanted to light her on fire and watch her die.” When brought “to the attention of Richneck administrators,” however, the teacher “was told to drop the matter.

“Several teachers said they received no support when they faced violence in the classroom or attacks from students,” the article informed. “Some speakers claimed the district is more interested in keeping discipline statistics low than in taking meaningful action to address students’ problems.”

The Post’s story was hampered by numerous school personnel refusing to talk citing their fear of reprisals from school authorities. 

While mental health help must be addressed, there is no solution to problems if administrators act like crooked politicians, simply sweeping aside serious issues.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


* In Virginia, a person must be seven years of age to be charged with a crime, so the first grader will not be prosecuted.

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education and schooling government transparency paternalism

Motown Bully

Is the republican form of government unnatural?

People in government tend to balk at republican imperatives, anyway. You know, like transparency. Citizen control sure seems unnatural to politicians.

Case in point: Detroit.

“The Rochester Community School district is determined to keep the sun from shining on its operations,” writes Kaitlyn Buss in The Detroit News.

At issue is a new school board member, Andrew Weaver. He had campaigned on issues like “transparency, accountability and communication between the district and parents.” Well, Superintendent Robert Shaner does not like this agenda. He “sent a letter to the board president and vice president in late December targeting [the] newly elected board member” and threatening “legal action if Weaver is too forceful in challenging the way schools are being run.”

This is awfully brazen, and it should alarm parents in the Rochester Community School District. For it is not coming from some obscure bureaucrat: “Shaner was selected as Superintendent of the Year in 2020 and is one of the longest tenured and highest paid school leaders in the state.”

He epitomizes government, at least in the “education” wing of Michigan government.

Bullying is how he rolls.

Mr. Weaver explains it this way: “I sat there as a private citizen and wondered why our board didn’t do anything. Well, we found the answer. Because they’re all scared of getting one of those [letters].”

But perhaps Weaver’s prepared for the battle. Even as a parent he’d received two cease-and-desist actions from Shaner, who objected to his online attacks.

Politicians think they are kings. Above citizen criticism.

Which is why citizen control must be forced upon them. 

Over their objections.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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education and schooling insider corruption local leaders

Lightfoot, Heavy Hand

When you’re right, you’re right.

And all of Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s critics are right that it was wrong for Lightfoot’s deserves-to-fail reelection campaign to solicit teachers to solicit students of the city’s public schools to work for her reelection campaign in exchange for class credit.

A former city inspector general called the move “deeply, deeply problematic.” Local teachers union honchos called it a “shakedown” and “exploitative and wrong.” Mayoral election challenger Brandon Johnson called it “outrageous, desperate, and downright unethical,” an abuse of power.

This may be a case of Corruption Grade B rather than Grade A if, as seems slightly possible, nobody on Lightfoot’s team understood that they were crossing another line in the endless saga of incumbents’ shameless misuse of government-controlled resources for political gain.

First, Lightfoot’s campaign said “this is common practice” and that they were just giving students “the opportunity to learn. . . .”

Eventually, they ended up saying that out of an “abundance of caution, we will cease contact with [public school] employees.” Then that campaign staff were being admonished about the “solid wall” that must exist between the campaign and “contacts” with noncampaign government employees.

Is enlisting public school teachers to enlist public school students to help an incumbent mayor’s reelection campaign really so very different from other abuses we have seen before, especially in a super-corrupt town like Chicago?

It doesn’t change the fact that when you’re wrong, you’re wrong.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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